Connecting with God through poetic articulations of lived, embodied experience–engaging texts from the Revised Common Lectionary for Christian churches, other biblical and spiritual texts, and evocations of the divine in rituals and other public events–always accepting lived reality as a primary source of divine revelation and mystery.

Seeking

Reflection on the 2nd Sunday in Lent, Year A

Two men sit quietly, knowing God is present, one seeking to better understand the other, wanting a companion on the journey into deeper truth, beginning, building, a relationship laden with meaning and possibility.

Sitting with Jesus can yield such gifts, man or woman or in between makes no difference. He loves all, especially those who seek, yearn, remain open to the more that lies ahead and is already deep inside when we listen, and touch soul to soul.

One who sat was Nicodemus, acknowledging the power of the Galilean while unsure of his teaching or mission. I know many like him, I am often one myself, claiming to follow and love, at least respect, but failing to commit.

To commit is to change, to put one thing ahead of what was first, God ahead of mammon, truth over alternate fact, love in place of hate, rebirth replacing lazy, long dying.

Jesus wants me to nurture the seed planted in the womb of my soul and to help others do the same, all sprouting and growing into the vibrant forest of humanity God planted in Eden long ago.

This one immortally mortal man was and is our oak, a model forest in himself for us, the one whose fallen, tortured body Nicodemus blessed with spices even if he could not walk the walk.

God asks us for more because there is always more from God, but heaven rejoices no matter how large or small is the testimony of our lives, especially when we choose to sit quietly and keep trying to commit.